Syracuse, N.Y. -- Having just survived a numbing meeting of some four hours on Tuesday afternoon, three members of the Syracuse Chiefs' Board of Directors spilled out of NBT Bank Stadium and into what was left of the day's sunshine.

And, no, they hadn't exactly cartwheeled.

Now, it would be unfair to suggest that the trio -- Bill Dutch, Joe Janowski and Paul Solomon -- were fanning out to three street corners to stand behind overturned fedoras and ask for spare change. But they had been given arithmetical confirmation of their suspicions, and they were in no mood to discuss it with the one poor soul who'd waited outside the compound's brick walls for their emergence.

"We have nothing to say," announced Dutch, the board's president who seems to enjoy zipping his lips, shaking his head and leaving those few fans of his team to wonder ... about everything. "We have all signed onto a confidentiality agreement. You can ask all the questions you want, but we're not going to answer any of them."

Everybody knows, of course, that the Chiefs had a miserable 2013 season that was a mix of too many losses on the field, vast stretches of empty seats throughout their tucked-away yard and a community-wide apathy that had pushed baseball into a hammock out back. But who'd have dared to guess that they'd somehow stumbled into a net loss of $505,146 across their snoozy campaign?

Well, they did. And the club's woes were outlined right there in a bleak financial report presented to Dutch, Janowski, Solomon and the rest of the ever-secretive Chiefs board on Tuesday.

Frightening, it is. Especially to those in our town who'd be crestfallen if the national pastime ever did get packed up and shipped away. But not unimaginable. Not when you consider that the Chiefs -- community-owned, mind you . . . or is that community-snubbed? -- are your basic dysfunctional organization run by your basic dysfunctional board.

And if you think those words are harsh and that they are mine, you are only half right.

Here's the thing with some of those folks associated with the Chiefs, who seem to deal with transparency the way vampires do mirrors: They don't talk on the record, but they talk. Enough of them to matter, anyway. And when they do, the message is the same.

And that message is the organization -- run by a splintered board with 22 official members and 46 "honorary" ones (32 of whom are listed in the club's press guide as dead) -- is a broken one and in desperate need of immediate and major fixing that had better only have been started with the encouraging of Tex Simone, the long-time pooh-bah, to retire and the partial re-aligning of the sales staff.

The good news is that after more erosion than even the board could continue to ignore, the rehabilitation may be nigh (assuming, it's not too late). Indeed, Dutch and the rest of his Star Chamber types are supposedly set to meet again, either this evening or Friday morning, to decide upon two proposals meant to rouse the Chiefs from their stupor, engage the Central New York populace and re-cast baseball as a summertime happening hereabouts.

Why the rush? There are, it seems, a half-million big ones, all of which have been wheelbarrowed into the room by the bean-counters.

"When we have something to say, we'll say it," Dutch declared on Tuesday as he headed to the stadium parking lot with no intention of stopping to share the slightest bit of insight with, or providing any hint of comfort to, those believers in his baseball team. "What we're talking about is confidential. I hope you understand."

He'd have been better off hoping for an audience larger than just one.